


like a race to be sure

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, bad kissing, bad timeline, it is not really shippy tbh, shitty teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ugly little part of Severa (there are many) is still quite sour that he’s getting taller than her while she hasn’t grown since her father used to chalk her height on the doorframe to their house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a race to be sure

**Author's Note:**

> shitty teen bad kissing, ft. severa and inigo—this is so seeped in my hcs again lmao i like to think flavia trained them both as mercs in the bad timeline after their parents died, and that they both had big fat hero-worship crushes on her. sev and inigo home-pierced each other’s ears and it was terrible, severa let her piercings close up during the two years she spent in the past b/c she realized it was kind of impractical.

"You still owe me a favor." Severa’s voice is a mumble just loud enough to push a puff of cold air out from between her lips. It’s always cold in Ferox, a kind of cold that leaves her lips and knuckles peripherally split and bleeding. She hates it. Inigo turns to her, and in the light of the torch he carries, she sees his brow pucker. They are an absolute farce of a watch, Severa thinks—Inigo’s sword is too big for his hand, and he carries it like it might turn around and bite him at any given moment.

  
"For what?"

  
"For piercing your ears, that’s for what!" she snaps. If he brings up that his left ear nearly got infected by her home job, she might slug him. Whatever else Severa might say about Inigo, he at least has her beat in the art of piercing ears, though it was her idea in the first place. She wears a pair of amber studs, bought in exchange for some of her mother’s last possessions—the things her father left her, Severa doubts anyone would want to buy.

  
"Oh," sheepish, Inigo shifts his weight from one foot to the other. They’ve stood still just long enough for the wind to begin worming its way into their bones. As if to outrun it, Severa strides by him at a clip. "Hey, wait!" Inigo calls out after her, loud enough that he’d be scolded if Ferox had the manpower to supervise two fourteen year-olds on the night watch. "Sev, I can’t, er, grant the fair lady her favor if she walks off before she even asks."

  
“‘Fair lady’?” Severa mimics, biting back an unladylike snort. “Ew, you sound like some flowery floozy from Ylisstol!”

  
"Are you saying you’d prefer me to be all burly and swaggering, like all these Feroxi men?" he asks, flexing his woefully slender biceps in an absurdly exaggerated pose. Inigo tries to pitch his voice low and growly—instead, it comes out like he’s got a particularly bad cold. "Aye, lass, why don’t you and I saunter up to the pub together and…?" trailing off in utter embarrassment, "and…just. Just not do that, perhaps. Gods," to the sound of Severa’s derisive huff, masking a laugh. "I try to bring some joy to your life, O Mistress Peripherally Grouchy, I really do."

  
"Try harder. Actually, on second thought—don’t," holding up a finger to silence Inigo before he even tries to speak. Severa gives him a once-over, regretting having brought up the subject of the favor in the first place. It must be the fact that it’s past midnight, she reasons, that makes her want to lower her standards so drastically. Then again, unconsciously working her lips into a wry twist, there’s not much lower for her standards to go after Owain (she was twelve and young and foolish, he was nice to her and was the only boy who said girls could use axes, she is so very over him now). She doesn’t have a  _crush_  on Inigo, per se, not even at his sweetest—crushes are for little girls, and he can take his newfound obsession with passion and push it, to borrow Khan Flavia’s words, where the sun doesn’t shine. He has nice eyes, Severa reasons, and he is probably the only person in the frozen-out and gutted shell of Regna Ferox who would be desperate enough to kiss her, anyhow.

  
"Sev? Anyone home in there?" Inigo sheathes his oversized sword to wave a hand in front of her face. Severa recoils from it as if he means to slap her, as if she means to hit him right back. She breathes out through her nose, hard.

  
"Hold very still," she orders, trying to keep her voice even. Inigo listens too well, for once, standing ramrod straight with his torch held aloft, as if awaiting an exacting inspection from Flavia. She steps up to him, tries to consider her angle. Is she supposed to stroke his ego and throw her arms around his neck? Clasp her hands behind her back and lean forward on her toes to give him a chaste little peck on the lips? An ugly little part of Severa (there are many) is still quite sour that he’s getting taller than her while she hasn’t grown since her father used to chalk her height on the doorframe to their house. You gotta measure up to the Vaike, champ, she can hear a ghost of a ghost of his voice, and for what it’s worth, at least she can still beat Inigo in an arm wrestle. Severa reaches out to put her palm flat against Inigo’s cheek, and rescinds—it’s too Cordelia, her latest excuse for doing everything as differently from her mother as she can imagine. Her gloved hand brushes against Inigo’s skin, which she imagines is just as cold and chapped as hers. His eyelids flutter shut, he exhales in staccato.

  
"Severa," he begins, voice high and thin like the air between them. 

  
"Will you just," fumbling for a good way to say it, "Let me kiss you, okay?"

  
"But, I’ve been saving that!" Inigo protests, flailing backwards, "You know, a first kiss is, it’s," gesticulating wildly with his free hand, in the torchlight she can see his cheeks darkened, "It’s got to be at the right time, with your one true—someone who’s special to you," he finishes lamely.

  
"Your one true love?" Severa mocks, only Inigo would have the audacity to say that and mean it with all his little heart. She wants to punch him or kiss him until his lip splits open like it does in the practice courts when she lets her temper run away with her, and it’s always worth it in the seconds before Flavia descends to demand that she either control that anger or pack it all up and wait to die. "Ugh, what, are you saying I’m not ‘special’ enough for you? Who else would even want to kiss you?" Severa is fairly certain she knows who he’d like to kiss, and at least it’s more acceptable for him to swoon over Flavia than it is for her. She takes a small, petty comfort in knowing that road is a dead end for both of them.

  
"…Point taken," Inigo admits, and he seems to deflate a little as what bravado he might have had leaves him in one gust. "Not that you aren’t wonderful, you really are. I mean it, even if you don’t think I do." He sounds sincere enough that Severa can almost suspend her disbelief. If she dislikes what he’s becoming, she can convince herself she’s far better.

  
"Don’t even talk for the rest of this, okay?" not even looking him in the face as she puts an arm around his waist and pulls him close. His Adam’s apple bobs obscenely as he swallows, hard. Severa wishes he would button his shirt up all the way and stop looking like a moron, hopes he’ll freeze and learn his lesson. "Whatever you have to say, it’ll totally ruin things." Inigo closes his eyes tight and nods like he’s been put in front of a firing squad. Severa runs her tongue over her lips, chalks the sudden, uncomfortable warmth up to the torch Inigo still holds. She doesn’t close her eyes until her mouth meets his, and regrets it immediately—zooming in on someone’s face as you’re about to kiss them is not a good way to keep a flattering image of them in your mind. A squeaky, surprised noise works its way out from the back of Inigo’s throat, his free hand scuttles up to her shoulder.

  
"Wait," he gasps, breaking away as if they’ve been passionately kissing for several minutes instead of awkwardly standing there with their lips smushed together. "Wait, can we have a redo?"

  
"You can’t have a  _redo_!” Severa snaps, all on the defensive even though he’s still in her arms. “That’s it! We’re done! Here’s to the worst first kiss in the history of, like, everything ever!”

  
"Well, sorry," as he tries all at once to pull himself away from her and lean in closer. "My heart wasn’t prepared."

  
"Then get it prepared already," she demands, moving one hand up to the back of his neck and pulling him down to meet her again. His lips press against the corner of hers, he scrambles to correct his trajectory and they end up in something approaching a kiss. It’s not unpleasant, Severa decides, but nor is it particularly pleasant, the two of them a parody of maturity, as if they’re trying to hold a pose until the curtains close and they can let out that breath they’ve been holding. She parts her lips a little, moves them over his, feeling like she’s trying to get a key to fit into a lock—this always looked much easier, much more attractive. Belatedly, Inigo responds in kind, opening his mouth too wide, though at least he makes a determined effort to match the way she kisses him. His breath is warm in her mouth and doesn’t really taste like anything, which Severa supposes is a mixed blessing, it could always be worse. Her fingers move up into his hair, probably grabbing too tight. You’re supposed to do that, it’s sweeping and romantic, unlike the very abrupt intrusion of Inigo’s tongue into her mouth. Severa tears away this time, and it takes Inigo a moment to register what’s just happened.

  
"They do that in Rosanne," he explains, as if that’s supposed to excuse him trying to shove his tongue down her throat.

  
"I don’t  _care_  what they do in Rosanne! Nobody does! I don’t even believe you—that’s just disgusting.”

  
"It’s true! I have it from a very reputable source that a lady is supposed to be very enamored by that."

  
"Enamored? More like enticed to vomit, ugh." Severa stares at a stone in the wall behind Inigo’s left earlobe, which is still slightly swollen with his new piercing, Inigo suddenly takes an intense interest in absolutely nothing over Severa’s shoulder. This is not the kind of first kiss Severa could ever tell her children about, an awkward silence stretching out into an empty, empty nighttime sky. If she ever makes it to having children, which she realizes grows more doubtful by the day. They stand there until Severa’s fingertips go numb through her gloves and she shoves Inigo in the back to get him moving again. Her stomach feels like lead, and the cracks in her lips sting worse in the wind for having been kissed and broken open again.


End file.
